faerie blood

Smashwords deploys to both Scribd and Oyster, so if you subscribe to either of those services, you can find the Free Court of Seattle books there! Here are the links, which will be added to the books’ pages:

On a related note, Harlequin has begun experimenting with putting material on Scribd as well. So if you’re a subscriber there you can ALSO read Valor of the Healer! The link for that is here and will be added to Valor‘s page as well.

Scribd does not yet have Vengeance of the Hunter, but they might pick it up if Valor shows some activity. So if you or any of your friends use the service, consider sharing the link around, mmkay? I will get paid for reads of the books on these services!

I have arranged with PS Print to get a second shipment of posters since the first shipment arrived damaged. When that second shipment arrives (ETA currently somewhere between the 20th and the 23rd), I’ll get those posters out to you. I also need to start sending out the postcards, since I have those as well.

Props to PS Print’s customer service who were very willing to work with me on getting this satisfactorily resolved.

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I am deploying an updated digital file for Faerie Blood out to the places where it’s sold. The differences in this file are:

I’m correcting a long-standing typo of the name of the demon Azganaroth in Chapter 20

Adding a bit of extra styling to fix wrapping issues with an mdash early in the book

Adding the same “Also by the Author” list of my titles that appears in Bone Walker

Adding ads for my other books and for the soundtrack at the end of the book, similar to Bone Walker

This updated file has been deployed to Smashwords, and as soon as it clears review there, I will be using Smashwords to deploy out to B&N and Kobo.

Which, by the way, is a thing I’m going to be doing now. My sales numbers on B&N and Kobo are low enough that I am electing, moving forward, to use Smashwords to deploy out to those sites instead of deploying to them directly. I will also be looking into Smashwords to deploy to iBooks as well.

The overall reason for this is to simplify my book deployment process some, and to cut down on the number of individual sites I have to check for sales numbers. If I use Smashwords to deploy to B&N, Kobo, and Apple, that’ll cut the number of sites I need to check from six to three.

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Pleased to report that crossposting to Dreamwidth and Livejournal is working again. But in case you missed a couple of my recent posts that had crossposting issues, here they are:

Last but not least, I was pointed on Facebook to this rather nifty little video, called “What is up with Noises? (The Science and Mathematics of Sound, Frequency, and Pitch)”. Pretty much what it says on the tin, and it’s a lovely little exploration of the science of sound and how we hear things. Check it out.

We’re a little sad that this is in fact the last episode that Matt and Shannon will be doing for a while, since they need to stand down from podcasting to take care of other ongoing life goals–but we’re honored to be in their closing episode, and we very much enjoyed talking to them. I’d never been on a podcast before, so wasn’t sure how it was going to work. But we all sat around a table with headphones on, chatting into microphones. It was fun!

Things I talk about: Faerie Blood and Bone Walker, my goals with the diversity of the cast (both in race and in sexual orientation), my familiarity with Seattle despite not actually being FROM here, and how Elvis and Great Big Sea are both huge musical influences on the storyline.

Things Dara talks about: the history of the bouzouki, how the Bone Walker soundtrack started as a Kickstarter stretch goal and then turned into a monster of epic proportions, hints of future plot points to be glimpsed in “Anarchy Now”, and things to look forward to on the Norwescon music track this year.

Go give it a listen, won’t you? And many thanks to Matt and Shannon for having us! I particularly enjoyed meeting their cats, and was deeply charmed that their big orange one is named after Ben Grimm. 😀

First up, I had a couple of excellent Boosting the Signal posts this past Friday! Cory Dale sent me an excerpt from her new release Demon Fare, and Jake Elliot, fellow member of NIWA, came by to tell me about his “mock-epic” fantasy The Wrong Way Down. Check their posts out if you missed ’em when they went up!

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Second, Bone Walker has a release date! AND A COVER! \m/ The ebook edition will be officially releasing on February 3rd! The official Bone Walker page has been updated accordingly! And the cover is now included on the homepage as well!

And as soon as I have a viable test mobi, I will be putting the book up for pre-order on Amazon. Other pre-order links will be following as soon as I can make them.

All hail Dara for her cover work and Kiri Moth for the art!

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Third, speaking of Bone Walker‘s march to release, I have already asked current proofreaders to get any noted typos back to me by Wednesday the 14th. Because Dara needs to commence work on the print and PDF versions ASAP in order to maximize our chances of having the print edition ready by Conflikt. So if you’re proofreading and you didn’t already see a request about that, do please get back to me by Wednesday!

On a related note, however, if you’d like to sanity-check ebook formats for me, stand by. As soon as I have a viable test mobi, I will need it tested on any and all available Kindle devices. I personally own a Kindle Fire HDX 7″ and will be using that for testing purposes. But all other types of Kindle will be welcome.

Likewise, I have two Nooks: a Nook HD and one of the new 7″ Samsung Nooks. I also have a Kobo Mini. Both will be used to test. If you have other type of Nook or Kobo device, though, those would be helpful.

AND, any iOS device owners comfortable with using iBooks OR Android device owners comfortable with getting books onto your devices, testing from you would be welcome too. Though tablets will be most useful once we have the PDF ready to test.

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Last but not least, don’t forget, Faerie Blood remains on sale for 99 cents to celebrate Bone Walker‘s imminent release! It will remain on sale until the end of February, at which point I’ll bump the price back up. So if you haven’t gotten the ebook of Faerie Blood yet, now would be a REALLY good time. ;D

And if you’re so inclined, do please spread the word about the sale! The sale price applies wherever Faerie Blood‘s ebook edition is sold, and I will honor it for any requests to buy the book directly from me as well!

Today’s top story: screw Black Friday, we’re releasing the first single from the forthcoming Bone Walker soundtrack NOW! Because we CAN!

Dara’s got her post up about it right over here, in which you can stream the premaster mix of “Something’s Coming” right off of Bandcamp. If you’re inclined, you can buy that single. AND you can preorder the album!

If you backed the Kickstarter, you of course don’t need to actually buy it because we will be sending it to you. But DO spread the word! And check out the previews of the other tracks that’ll be coming!

We’ll be doing the official release for this thing at the next Conflikt in January, along with the release for the actual Bone Walker novel! SO EXCITING. Stand by for more on this as it happens!

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As I think I’ve mentioned before, Dara and I are fans of the Doctor Who Podcast, one of the many Doctor-themed podcasts available for your listening pleasure. In addition to reviewing new episodes when they come out, they have extensive knowledge of the Classic-era series as well as the Big Finish audio range, and all of their presenters are just generally fun to listen to.

One of the things we find particularly charming about them is the jingle they wrote for whenever they review a Big Finish release! It goes like this:

Big Finish with Ian! And Michelle from across the Atlantic Ocean!
Ian from UK, and Michelle from the United States!
Reviewing Big Finish, sorting out the wheat from the chaff and nonsense
Saving you money on the ones that are not so good!

It’s insidiously catchy, enough that every time we hear it show up in an episode of the podcast, we start singing along. Hell, THEY’VE even songvirused themselves with it.

So the other night I said to Dara, “I wonder if this thing would work as a round!” And the fun thing about having a spouse with her own music studio? She can FIND OUT.

And while we’re on the topic of things you should signalboost, don’t forget, Faerie Blood is ON SALE for $2.99 until this coming Monday! All the details are right over here!

I will also honor the sale price for anyone who wants to buy the ebook directly from me in the format of their choice!

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Last but DEFINITELY not least, Victory of the Hawk is now available for preorder as well AND has shown up on Goodreads. So if you’d like to get in some preorder love on Book 3 of the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy, NOW IS THE TIME! Links are on the Victory of the Hawk page!

And if you haven’t read Valor or Vengeance yet, now would also be a VERY good time to get caught up on those. If you haven’t read anything of my writing at all yet, or if you’ve just read Faerie Blood and aren’t sure whether you’d like my high fantasy, you can even see some shiny samples that’ll let you read up to 10 percent of each book, provided courtesy of Overdrive! The samples are available on the Valor of the Healer and Vengeance of the Hunter pages!

Just because I can, I’m putting Faerie Blood on sale for $2.99 through December 1st, Cyber Monday!

If you want to buy it from Smashwords, you can use the coupon code EC86P here.

A promotional price has been set on Kobo to put the price at $2.99 (and international equivalents) through December 1st. You can get Faerie Blood from Kobo here.

A promotional price is on Google Play now as well and you can get the book from Google Play here. (They’ve actually put it down to $2.51 since Google Play knocks a bit more off the price in general.)

B&N doesn’t have a mechanism to let me set a promotional price, so I’ve just adjusted the pricing there. You can get Faerie Blood for the Nook here.

A promotional price has been set on iTunes for the book there. Faerie Blood is available on all the iTunes stores I have access to; a full list of iTunes links is available on the book’s official page!

And I can’t set a promotional price for Kindle since I’m not on KDP Select–but I’ve set the price there down to $2.99 as well. All of the various Kindle links for the book are on the book’s official page!

Please feel free to spread the word around about this sale as you like!

I’m not a well-known writer by any stretch of the imagination. In any given month I’m lucky if my sales numbers crack two digits. This means, Internets, that every time a reader reaches out to me, it’s a rare and special occurrence.

I mention this because I was contacted on Goodreads by a reader who thanked me profusely for Faerie Blood, specifically because she’s a reader of color, and it meant a lot to her to see Kendis, a heroine of color. She told me that she talked the book up to her friends as well, because she was so excited to find a book with a heroine like her.

Now, y’all, I’m a white woman. And I’ll say straight up that I was a bit nervous about making Kendis a heroine of color–because since I am a white woman, by definition, I’m not going to be able to write about a PoC with the same perspective and experience that writers of color can. It’s very likely that as I continue to write Kendis (because Bone Walker IS on the way, I swear!), I’ll probably screw something up in that regard.

But on the other hand, I felt like it was important to make Kendis non-white. As with a lot of aspects of my writing, this grew out of my love for Elfquest and the simple fact that I saw the Sun Folk–elves of color!–so vividly portrayed on the pages of that series. I’m also very aware, after a lifetime of reading SF/F, that protagonists of color are still pretty damned thin on the ground. The ones that do get written about run the risk of being whitewashed on their covers if they’re written by white authors–or of being exiled to non-SF/F sections of the bookstore if they’re written by authors of color.

And I’m aware that as a white author, I have a certain level of privilege that may get my book looked at twice when an author of color’s book might not be. The same applies to Valor of the Healer, where I also have a distinctly non-white heroine (and I’m grateful to Carina for making sure that’s clear!). At the same time, I acknowledge that yeah, I might screw something up, and that I need to listen if a reader of color comes and tells me “hey, you wrote this wrong”.

I hope I have the grace and sense to listen when that happens, to learn, and to do better next time.

But for now, I want to send a public shout-out to Colette on Goodreads. Thank you, Colette!

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Along the same lines as above, some links y’all should be aware of if you haven’t seen them already.

N.K. Jemisin gave an excellent GoH speech at Wiscon this past weekend, and posted the transcript of it on her site here. Jemisin is calling it like she sees it in re: racism in SF/F, and she’s not wrong. It’s ongoing, it’s horrible, and it needs to stop.

Likewise, I’d like to call out Hiromi Goto’s GoH speech from the same convention. Pretty much her entire speech resonates with me, especially the closing where she talks about the Japanese word kotodama. We are, in SF/F, writers and readers. Words are powerful to all of us. They can effect change, and as both Jemisin and Goto so passionately proclaim, there’s much our words can do if we let their spirit move us.

Just before Wiscon, too, Mary Robinette Kowal put up an excellent post on the need for diversity in SF/F over here. I’d particularly like to point out the discussion in the comments, wherein the question is raised by a straight white male writer about what he can do to promote diversity. It is very, very important to note that in the replies he got, one of the big points made was that diversity does not mean that straight white men have to shut up or stop writing. Or that they even have to stop writing about characters like them, i.e., straight white men. Diversity includes SWMs too.

Diversity isn’t a zero-sum game. It doesn’t mean that just because minority writers are getting more of a voice, majority writers have to stand down. It does mean that those of us who enjoy majority privilege–whether because of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or whatever–need to have the grace to let others have their say too.

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And this also applies to sexism. Like many of you, I’ve seen the horrible news going around about the shooting in California, and the virulently misogynist motives of the shooter. I’ve seen the response of #YesAllWomen springing up on Twitter, and roundup posts like this one on The Mary Sue, featuring some of the most powerful tweets with that hashtag.

I have seen men I know posting their bemusement about what “rape culture” means, and what on earth they can do in the face of such vicious hatred. I’ve seen other men I know, however, posting their sentiments that they need to stand up and say enough and this is not okay. They’re right. Because women keep screaming this–and mind you, we’re not going to stop–but the simple bitter truth is that there are a lot of men out there who aren’t going to hear us simply because we’re women. Men need to say it too–and turn their gender privilege into a force for good.

I’ll close this post with a pointer over to this post of Vixy’s, in which she lays down a lot of words of wisdom on this very topic. Go listen to her.

Latest News

Are you a Smashwords user? If you are, you can get Faerie Blood and Bone Walker for 50 percent off and my short stories "The Blood of the Land" and "The Disenchanting of Princess Cerridwen" for free, for the entire month of July! Details on this post, with coupon codes!

Latest Release

Victory of the Hawk, the concluding volume of the Rebels of Adalonia trilogy, is now available!